The Western Political and Corporate Elite: The Bilderberg

Offcial website, www.bilderbergmeetings.org

The Bilderberg is reputed to run the most exclusive and private annual conferences. It is the prime "mover and shaker" organisation in the world, comprising presidents, royal families, ministers, top industrialists and financial leaders.

It strictly consists of "Western" elite, i.e. of the USA and Europe. It explicitly excludes anyone from Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.

Name origins

There are two explanations about the origins of the name "Bilderberg."

It took its name from the Hotel de Bilderberg (www.bilderberg.nl/uk/) in Oosterbeek, the Netherlands, where the first meeting took place in May 1954. The hotel was built in 1918 and renovated in 1997 and believed to be named after Farben Bilder,  a key executive member of the German Third Reich (1933-45).

Farben Bilder helped organize an elite group to direct Heinrich Himmler's "Circle of Friends," and one of the Bilderberg founders was Dutch Prince Bernhard, who was born in Germany, had been a member in the Reiter SS.

Dutch Prince Bernhard admired Bilder, and wanted a similarly elite group to manage global economic events so there would never be another Great Depression.

Farben Bilder was also behind the ownership and naming of IG Farben, a German chemical industry conglomerate.

IG Farben's name is further taken from Interessen-Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG, founded in 1925 and became defunct in 1952. It was born out of a syndicate of six dye-making corporations, BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, Agfa, Griesheim-Elektron, Weiler Ter Meer. It was broken up and liquidated "due to the severity of the war crimes committed by IG Farben during World War II." It was succeeded by the original constituent companies, BASF, Bayer and Hoechst.  

Wilhelm Karl Keppler (1882-1960) was a German businessman, the chairman of another IG Farben subsidiary Braunkohle-Benzin AG and one of Adolf Hitler's early financial backers. "To strengthen the Nazi Party's ties with business and industry, Keppler founded the Circle of Friends of the Economy (Freundeskreis der Wirtschaft, which is sometimes referred to as the "Keppler Circle"). Keppler joined the SS (#50,816) in August 1932 and founded the Circle of Friends of Heinrich Himmler, which was a continuation of the Keppler Circle."

Farben Bilder played an important role in organizing the "Circle of Friends" of Heinrich Himmler by sponsoring the meetings. Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) was a key Nazi leader.

Keppler's nephew, Fritz J. Dranefuss, was the personal assistant to Heinrich Himmler. Of the forty members of the Circle of Friends, which provided ample funds for Himmler, eight were executives of I.G. Farben or its subsidiaries.

Founders

The Bilderberg was created by four people:
1. British politician, Denis Healey (now Lord Healey of Riddlesden) (1917-). At the time he was the Labour Party's MP and Shadow Secretary of State. He later went on to be the British Secretary of State for Defence from 1964 to 1970, Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1974 to 1979 and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party (1980-83). A member of the Fabian Society Executive Committee and a councillor of the Royal Institute of International Affairs before he became a politician.  
2. Joseph Hieronim Retinger (1888-1960), a Polish of German Jewish origins and the son of the private legal counsel and advisor to the eminent Polish nobleman Count Wladyslaw Zamoyski. He was the founding secretary of the Bilderberg Group from 1954-1960. According to Denis Healey, from his autobiography 'The Time of My Life' (Penguin, 1989), the Bilderberg Group was "brain-child of Joseph Retinger, a Pole who had settled in England after the Great War, married the daughter of the socialist intellectual, E.D. Morel, and worked as a secretary to Joseph Conrad, another Polish expatriate." (http://home.teleport.com/~flyheart/retinger.htm)
3. American businessman, David Rockefeller, was head of the Chase Manhattan Bank, member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), member of the Business Council, the US Council of the International Chamber of Commerce, and founder of the Trilateral Commission.
4. The Netherlands' German-born Prince Bernhard (1911-2004), the husband of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands and father of her four children, including the former monarch Queen Beatrix. At the time, he was an important figure in the oil industry and held a major position in Royal Dutch Petroleum (Shell Oil), as well as Société Générale de Belgique - a powerful global corporation. He gave the go-ahead, but the idea for the Bilderberg belonged to Joseph H. Retinger (also known as L'Eminence - His Grey Eminence).

Prince Bernhard, whose family, the Hapsburgs, is said to have descended from the Roman Emperors, was a former Nazi SS officer while he was a student. He first became interested in the Nazis in 1934, during his last year of study at the University of Berlin. He was recruited by a member of the Nazi intelligence services, but first worked openly in the motorized SS. Bernhard went to Paris to work for the firm IG Farben, which pioneered Nazi Economics Minister Hjalmar Schacht's slave labour camp system by building concentration camps to convert coal into synthetic gasoline and rubber. Bernhard's role was to conduct espionage on behalf of the SS.

According to the April 5, 1976 issue of Newsweek, this role, as part of a special SS intelligence unit in IG Farbenindustrie, had been revealed in testimony at the Nuremberg trials.

It was created to make the USA and Europe work together harmoniously and as a supportive wing of NATO and the Marshall Plan which was launched in the 1940s.

That pioneering meeting grew out of the concern expressed by many leading citizens on both sides of the Atlantic that Western Europe and North America were not working together as closely as they should on matters of critical importance.

Origins of the Bilderberg


The initiative for the first convocation came from Joseph Retinger, in conjunction with Paul Rijkens, President of Unilever (which was formed in 1930 when the Dutch margarine company ‘Margarine Unie’ merged with British soapmaker Lever Brothers).

The significance of Unilever needs to be examined. Unilever is one of the largest and most powerful multinational corporations in the world and one of the top European companies. In the 1950's the advisory directors of Unilever were as follows (attention is being drawn to the links with the Rotterdam Bank and Philips, the electrical firm):
* H.M. Hirschfield, also on the board of Philips and Rotterdam Bank and with the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs during the war, and after it Commissioner for the Marshall Plan in the Netherlands;
* K.P. Van der Mandel, also on the board of Rotterdam Bank;
* Paul Rijkens, also on the board of Rotterdam Bank;
* H.L. Wolterson, also chair of Philips and on the board of Heldring and Pearson (linked with the Rotterdam Bank);
* P S.F Otten, also President of Philips (and married to a member of the Philips family)

One of the unusual features of Unilever is its bi-national structure (Stokman et al, 1985): it is a jointly owned Anglo Dutch company, with a fifty-fifty structure and a unitary board. This was a very useful device during the war, when operations could be shifted easily from the Netherlands to the Britain.

Philips had a similar arrangement under a Dutch law called the Corvo Law, whereby in an emergency it could divide itself into two parts, which it did when the Germans invaded: one with its HQ in Germany and the other American. Both these parts got large military contracts during the war, playing a role on both sides (Aaronovitch 1961, pp. 110-11).

The immediate chain of events leading to the setting up of the first conference were as follows. Prince Bernhard set off for the USA in 1952 to visit his old friend Walter Bedell Smith, director of the newly formed CIA. Smith put the organisation of the American end into the hands of Charles D. Jackson (special assistant for psychological warfare to the US President), who appointed John S. Coleman (president of the Burroughs Corporation. and a member of the Committee for a National Trade Policy), who in turn briefly became US chair of Bilderberg.

Charles Jackson was president of the Committee for a Free Europe, forerunner of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) whose extensive operations financing and organizing anti-Communist social democratic political intellectuals has only recently been fully documented (see Coleman 1989); and ran the CIA-financed Radio Free Europe (RFE) in Germany. Earlier, he had been publisher of Fortune magazine and managing director of Time/Life magazines, and during the war was deputy head of psychological warfare for Eisenhower. At the time of Bernhard's visit he was working with a committee of businessmen on both sides of the Atlantic, which approved the European Payments Union.

It was thus a European initiative, and its aim was, in official language, to 'strengthen links' between Western Europe and the USA.

Retinger drew up a selected list of people to be invited to the first conference with Prince Bernhard and Rijkens, from the European countries of NATO plus Sweden.

The resulting group consisted of the Belgian and Italian prime ministers, Paul van Zeeland and Alcide de Gasperi (CDU), from France both the right wing prime minister Antoine Pinay and the Socialist leader Guy Mollet; diplomats like Pietro Quaroni of Italy and Panavotis Pipinelis of Greece; top German corporate lawyer Rudolf Miller and the industrialist Otto Wolff von Amerongen; the Danish foreign minister Ole Bjorn Kraft (publisher of Denmark’s top daily newspaper); from England came Denis Healey and Hugh Gaitskell from the Labour Party, Robert Boothby from the Conservative Party, Sir Oliver Franks from the British state, and Sir Colin Gubbins, who had headed the Special Operations Executive (SOL) during the war; on the American side, the members of the first Bilderberg assembly included: George Ball, who was head of Lehman Brothers, a former high State Department official, where he was architect of the policy of Atlantic Partnership, and later member of the Trilateral Commission. Ball was closely associated with Jean Monnet, owing to his work as legal counsel for the ECSC and the French delegation to the Schuman Plan negotiations.

Dean Rusk - US Secretary of State 1961-69, earlier President of the Rockefeller Foundation 1952-60, having succeeded John Foster Dulles, himself an earlier Secretary of State. A close personal friend of Jean Monnet whom he had first met at Versailles in 1918 as well as of Dean Acheson, Truman's Secretary of State and the true author of the Marshall Plan.

The final list was 67. Since then, the group enlarged somewhat, but the steering group remained the same size. Each year, the "steering committee" devises a selected invitation list with a maximum 100 names.

After Retinger's death in 1960, the role of secretary was taken over by Dutch Socialist Ernst van der Beughel, headed the Dutch bureau for the Marshall Plan and later became Chairman of KLM airlines and the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

After the resignation of Prince Bernhard who served as chairman for twenty-two years. He was succeeded by Lord Home of the Hirsel, former Prime Minister of Britain, who chaired the meetings for four years.

At the 1980 meeting, Lord Home turned over the chairmanship to Walter Scheel, former President of the Federal Republic of Germany.

In 1985, Mr. Scheel resigned, and was succeeded by Lord Roll of Ipsden, President of S. G. Warburg Group plc.

At 1989 meeting, Lord Roll turned over the chairmanship to Lord Carrington, who still chairs the meetings.

Retinger, as a Catholic, was viewed by many as an agent of the Vatican, acting in liaison between the Pope and the Father-General of the Jesuit Order then.

One of Retinger's renowned achievements in European politics was the founding of the European Movement (arising out of the Congress of the Hague), leading to the establishment of the Council of Europe on 5th May 1949. With its headquarters in Strasbourg, the Council Executive Committee provided Retinger his first major platform for his expansive ideology. From his earlier days at the Sorbonne, Retinger believed in greater European unity, both in military and economic terms. It was also at the same time when his interest in the guidance of the Jesuit order manifested itself. He spent a great deal of his time fulfilling these ambitions. He suggested to Premier Georges Clemenceau a plan to unite Eastern Europe-involving the merging of Austria, Hungary and Poland as a tripartite monarchy under the guidance of the Jesuit order. Clemenceau, doubtful of the Vatican-inspired plan, rejected Retinger's proposal outright. This plan labelled Retinger, thereafter, as a Vatican agent.

Retinger was a man who could make an appointment with the President of the United States just by picking up the telephone. In 1952, Retinger proposed a secret conference to Prince Bernhard, which would involve the NATO leaders in an open and frank discussion on international affairs behind closed doors.

The Prince thought it was a grand idea, and they formed a committee to plan the conference. Bernhard briefed the Truman administration about the meeting in 1952, and although the idea was warmly embraced in the U.S., the first American counterpart group was not formed until the Eisenhower administration.

CIA Director General Walter Bedell Smith and C.D. Jackson were key players in organizing the American counterpart group, heavily influenced by the Rockefeller dynasty, whose Standard Oil holdings competed with Bernhard's Royal Dutch Petroleum. From then on, the Bilderberg business reflected the concerns of the oil industry in its meetings.

At early meetings of the Bilderberg, attendees expressed frustration with American politics, then in the throes of McCarthyism, whose nationalist ideology stood in the way of global planning. C. D. Jackson tried to quell their fears by saying, "Whether McCarthy dies by an assassin's bullet or is eliminated in the normal American way of getting rid of boils on body politics, I prophesy that by the time we hold our next meeting he will be gone from the American scene."

The occasion of the first meeting has outgrown the hotel, but the Dutch link remains. Among several European royals who attend as occasional guests, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and her husband come regularly. Bilderberg's tiny secretariat sits in The Hague, the Netherlands. The meetings now take place by informal rotation in countries of the Atlantic community. Each country has two steering committee members. (The British ones have included Lord Carrington; Denis Healey – a former British MP, Defence Minister, Chancellor for Margaret Thatcher; Andrew Knight, the one-time editor of The Economist magazine and is now executive chairman of the 'rival' News International, which runs The Times and the Sun, and which is funded by the Oppenheimers and the Rothschilds; and Martin Taylor, the ex-CEO of Barclays Bank.)

Some of the Bilderberg-friendly global corporations are Xerox, Heinz, Fiat, Barclays bank and Nokia, which donate hundreds of thousands of dollars needed for the meetings. The group does not accept unsolicited donations from non-Bilderberg corporations.

Bilderberg meetings are held in remote places, and attendees are encouraged to leave spouses and aides at home, to not use prepared texts, and to conduct discussions in English as much as possible.

Director and advisory board members include Gianni Agnelli of Fiat, Dwayne Andreas (controlling shareholder of Archer-Daniels Midland), Zbigniew Brzezinski (former national security advisor in the Carter administration), Lord Carrington (former British foreign and defense minister and secretary-general of NATO and close business partner of Henry Kissinger), Andrew Knight (one time editor of the Economist and is now executive chairman of the 'rival' News International, which runs The Times and the Sun, and which is funded by the Oppenheimers and the Rothschilds), Richard Perle (of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, former U.S. assistant secretary of National Defense and one of the champions of the Strategic Defense Initiative and Euro-missile deployment, and part of the American President George Bush’s neo-conservative cabal), Paul Volker (former Federal Reserve chairman), and George Will (U.S. right-wing columnist and commentator), to name just a few.

"Providentially, the world became more accessible for me as Canada became less commodious," Conrad Black said in his biography, "A Life in Progress". "It was from Bilderberg that our company's eventual vocation as an international newspaper organization arose."

It was felt that regular, off-the-record discussions would help create a better understanding of the complex forces and major trends affecting Western nations in the difficult post-war period.

It meets regularly (presumably on a once-a-year basis) at various locations around the world, always in extreme secrecy, often at resorts controlled by either the Rockefeller or Rothschild families. The Rothschild family is the leading European force within the Bilderberg Group, sharing its power with the American-based Rockefeller family. The internationalist group has a revolving membership of several hundred participants composed of elites from the United States and Western Europe, primarily—almost exclusively—from the NATO countries. (Representatives from the former Soviet Union and East Bloc countries attended meetings since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Bilderberg maintains an extremely low profile and seldom, if ever, publishes reports or studies (for the public, at least) under its own official aegis. Bilderberg participants denied the groups very existence for decades until forced into the open by the glare of media publicity, generated largely by the Spotlight magazine and its publisher, Liberty Lobby.

Since the constitution of several monarchies of the Western Europe bans members of their royal families from playing an active role in the political process, the Bilderberg meetings provide this exact forum and platform for them.

The first (Bilderberg) meeting was convened under the chairmanship of Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, who served as chairman for twenty-two years. He was succeeded by Lord Home of the Hirsel, former Prime Minister for the United Kingdom, who chaired the meetings for four years. At the 1980 meeting, Lord Home turned over the chairmanship to Walter Scheel, former President of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1985, Mr. Scheel resigned, and was succeeded by Lord Roll of Ipsden, President of S. G. Warburg Group Plc. At 1989 meeting, Lord Roll turned over the chairmanship to Lord Carrington (former Chairman of the Conservative Party, former British Foreign Affairs Minister during the reign of Margaret Thatcher, former NATO secretary general, trustee of the right-wing Zimbabwe Democracy Trust and close business partner of Henry Kissinger) who still chairs the meetings.

Participants are invited to the Bilderberg meeting by the Chairman, following his consultations and recommendations by the Steering Committee membership, the Advisory Group and the Honorary Secretaries-General. This approach ensures a full, informed and balanced discussion of the agenda items. The individuals are chosen based on their knowledge, standing and experience. They attend the Bilderberg in a private and not in an official capacity. There are usually about 120 participants of whom about two-thirds come from Europe and the balance from North America. About one-third are from government and politics, and two-thirds from finance, industry, labour, education, communications. The previous participants maintain that, at the meetings, no resolutions are proposed, no votes are taken and no policy statements are made.

In 1991, David Rockefeller was quoted while speaking at the June, 1991 Bilderberg meeting in Baden, Germany at a meeting also attended by then-Governor Bill Clinton and by Dan Quayle: "We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years."

He went on to explain: "It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries."

Bilderberg policy is carried out by the Bilderberg Steering Committee, made up of 24 Europeans and 15 Americans; and by the Advisory Committee, which forms a much smaller group within the organization. All American members of the Steering Committee are members of the CFR. The permanent Bilderberg Secretariat is located at: 1 Smidswater, the Hague, the Netherlands. Their address in America is at: 345 E. 46th Street, New York City (which is also the location of the Trilateral Commission, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace).

The American Friends of Bilderbergers, with offices in New York City, is an IRS-approved charitable organization that receives regular contributions from Exxon, Arco, and IBM; while their meetings are funded by the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and the Carnegie Endowment Fund.

Prominent personalities who are/have been associated with the Bilderberg?
(Not in any order)

• Lord Carrington-Chairman of the Board, Christie's International plc; Former Secretary-General NATO and Trust and close business partner of Henry Kissinger.
• Hilmar Kopper-Spokesman of the Board of Managing Directors, Deutsche Bank AG
• Ashdown Paddy, the Leader of the Liberal Party of Britain participant in a 1989 meeting. As a young man, Ashdown served in the Royal Marines and the Special Boat Service—the navy’s equivalent of the SAS. Afterwards he is supposed to have worked for the British intelligence service MI6, whilst serving as First Secretary of the British mission to the United Nations in Geneva. Towards the end of his career as Liberal Democrat leader in the late 1990s, he made several expenses-paid trips to Yugoslavia courtesy of George Soros’ Open Society Institute. The pro-capitalist institute operates mainly in East European countries and boasts of the “exceptional levels of cooperation and coordination” between Western institutions in the Yugoslav election campaign in 2000, which led to the overthrow of Milosevic.
• Percy Barnevik – ex-President and CEO, ABB Asea Brown Boveri Ltd, Sweden
• James D. Wolfensohn - President, World Bank
• George W. Ball - Former Under-Secretary of State, USA
• Jacob Wallenberg, chairman of the board of commercial bank SEB and head of Sweden's influential Wallenberg family whose empire has a finger in almost every big Swedish company. Executive Vice-Chairman, Investor AB. Vice-Chairman: The Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation; Atlas Copco; Electrolux SAS. Member of the Board: ABB Ltd; WM-data; Swedish Federation of Enterprise; Nobel Foundation, EQT.

EQT is a private equity fund acting as an investment advisor to all funds, has offices in Stockholm, Sweden, Helsinki, Finland and Copenhagen, Denmark. EQT realizes its business concept by acquiring medium-sized companies in the Nordic countries and serving as an active owner in close co-operation with the management of the companies acquired.

Documents from The Second European War contain evidence that Jacob and Marcus Wallenberg used their Enskilda Bank to help the Nazis dispose of assets seized from Dutch Jews who died in the Holocaust. According to extensive documentation, the Wallenberg bank also provided illicit cover so a German company could operate in the United States - with help from a future US secretary of state, John Foster Dulles. The documents indicate that the company, Bosch, paid its fee in gold, but that the Wallenbergs insisted that the gold be used to buy Swiss securities because they feared the gold had been stolen by the Nazis. So dominant that Jacob was the country's unofficial business emissary to the Nazis while Marcus played the same role with the Allies. Even so, US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. warned in one wartime document that he considered both brothers to be pro-Nazi, citing their ``collaboration and/or connivance in facilitating major German capital operations in Sweden.'' One of those operations, according to documents unearthed by the Dutch scholars, was a Wallenberg agreement to purchase for resale securities that the Nazis forced Dutch Jews to surrender after the Nazis occupied Holland in 1940. After lengthy post-war negotiations, the Enskilda Bank returned securities to the Netherlands, only after a stipulation that the Wallenbergs had obtained them without any knowledge that they had been plundered from Jews. But the Dutch authors uncovered a US State Department report noting that Marcus Wallenberg subsequently admitted that the bank dealt in securities looted by the Nazis. After the war began in 1939, the Enskilda Bank agreed to become the straw owner of the American Bosch Co., a subsidiary of the German firm of the same name, so that it could avoid having its assets confiscated if the United States entered the war. Dulles, acting as the Wallenbergs' attorney, handled the details. But after Pearl Harbor, American officials saw through the ruse, and seized the company's shares. But when Bosch in 1943 arranged to pay Enskilda for its services, the fees, equivalent to about $12 million today, were obtained in gold from the German government. According to the documents found by the Dutch, one of the Wallenberg brothers - the documents do not say which - ``asked where the gold actually came from and suggested in case of an objectionable origin to sell it and buy in its place Swiss or Swedish securities.'' Bosch complied with the request.

The Wallenberg Group dominates the Swedish industry, in particular the multinational engineering sector.

• Former IMF heads Michel Camdessus and Stanley Fischer. Before joining the International Monetary Fund, Michel Camdessus was governor of the Bank of France and has spent most of his career working for the French government.
• The chairmen of carmakers Fiat, Giovanni Agnelli, and DaimlerChrysler, Juergen Schrempp
• Former British finance minister Kenneth Clarke
• Dutch Queen Beatrix
• Xerox Corp CEO Paul Allaire
• Former USA President Bill Clinton
• Former Portuguese Prime Minister António Guterres
• Lord Conrad Black a British and Canadian media baron and former owner of the Telegraph group (Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph). The Telegraph Plc was controlled by Conrad Black, a senior member of the Trilateral Commission. Directors of the Telegraph include Sir Evelyn De Rothschild, chairman of N.M. Rothschild & Sons Ltd, Rupert Hambro, a member of the Hambro family and a director of the Anglo-American Corporation, which is controlled by the Oppenheimer family. Also on the board of The Telegraph Plc is Henry Keswick, chairman of Jardine Matheson Holdings Ltd. Henry Keswick's Brother is Chairman of Hambro's Bank Ltd and a director of De Beer's Consolidated Gold Mines Ltd. De Beer's is controlled by the Oppenheimer Family.
• Richard Holbrooke,
• Peter Mandelson, British Northern Ireland Secretary
• Portugal’s President Jorge Sampaio
• Lord Robert Owen
• Margaret Thatcher, former British prime minister
• Helmut Kohl former German chancellor
• Lord Peter Carrington
• Queen Sophia of Spain
• Bernander, John G. - Director General, Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation
• Bolkestein, Frits - Commissioner, European Commission
• Borges, António - Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Goldman Sachs
• Castries, Henri de - Chairman of the Board, AXA, France
• Cebrián, Juan Luis - CEO, Prisa (El Pais)
• Dahrendorf, Ralf - Member, House of Lords; Former Warden, St. Antony's College, Oxford
• Dam, Kenneth W. - Deputy Secretary, US Department of Treasury
• David, George A. - Chairman of the Board, CocaCola H.B.C. S.A.
• Dinh, Viet D. Assistant Attorney General for Office of Policy Development, USA
• Draghi, Mario - Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, Goldman Sachs International, Italy
• Eldrup, Anders - Chairman of the Board of Directors, Danish Oil & Gas Consortium, Denmark
• Feldstein, Martin S. - President and CEO, National Bureau of Economic Research, USA
• Ferreira, Elisa Guimarães - Member of Parliament, Former Minister of Planning, Protugal
• Fortescue, Adrian - Director General, Justice and Internal Affairs, European Commission
• Frum, David - American Enterprise Institute; Former Special Assistant to President Bush
• Gigot, Paul A. - Editorial Page Editor, The Wall Street Journal
• Greenspan, Alan - Chairman, former Federal Reserve System
• Groenink, Rijkman W.J. - Chairman of the Board, ABN AMRO Bank N.V, Netherlands
• Halberstadt, Victor - Professor of Economics, Leiden University; Former Honorary Secretary General of Bilderberg Meetings, Netherlands
• Hoagland, Jim - Associate Editor, The Washington Post
• Krauthammer, Charles - Columnist, The Washington Post
• Kravis, Marie-Josée - Senior Fellow - Hudson Institute Inc. USA
• Mathews, Jessica T. - President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, USA
• McAuliffe, Terry - Chairman, Democratic National Committee, USA
• McDonough, William J. - President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
• Mitchell, Andrea - Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent, NBC News, USA
• Moïsi, Dominique - Deputy Director, French Institute of International Relations, France
• Montbrial, Thierry de - Director, French Institute of International Relations, France
• Moskow, Michael H. - President, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
• Ollia, Jorma - Chairman of the Board and CEO, Nokia Corporation, Finland
• Padoa-Schioppa, Tommaso - Member of the Executive Board, European Central Bank
• Perle, Richard N. - Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
• Polenz, Ruprecht - Member of Parliament, CDU/CSU, Germany
• Prestowitz, Jr., Clyde V. - President, Economic Strategy Institute, USA
• Racicot, Mark - Chairman, Republican National Committee
• Randa, Gerhard - Chairman and CEO, Bank Austria AG, Austria
• Rumsfeld, Donald H. - Secretary of Defense, USA
• Schrempp, Jurgen E. - Chairman of the Board of Management, DaimlerChrysler AG, Germany
• Schweitzer, Louis - Chairman and CEO, Renault S.A, France
• Seidenfaden, Tøger - Editor-in-Chief, Politiken, Denmark
• Shevtsova, Lilia - Senior Associate, Carnegie Moscow Center, Russia
• Siegman, Henry - Council on Foreign Relations, USA
• Soros, George - Chairman, Soros Fund Management, USA. George Soros, the global financial manipulator who is believed to be operating under orders from the House of Rothschild.
• Steinberg, James B. - Vice President and Director, Foreign Policy Studies Program, USA
• Summers, Lawrence H. - President, Harvard University, USA
• Sutherland, Peter D. - Chairman and Managing Director, Goldman Sachs International; Chairman BP Amoco
• Thornton, John L. - President and co-CEO, The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. USA
• Tiilikainen, Teija H. - Director of Research, Centre for European Studies, Finland
• Treschow, Michael - Chairman, Ericsson, Sweden
• Trichet, Jean-Claude - Governor, Banque de France, France
• Vranitzky, Franz - Former Federal Chancellor, Austria
• S Wallenberg, Jacob - Chairman of the Board, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken
• Whyte, Kenneth - Editor, The National Post, Canada
• Williams, Gareth - Leader, House of Lords; Member of the Cabinet, Britain

When Blacks Ruled Spain, Portugal and North Africa

(This is not out of hate or bitterness against anyone. There is no language of hate or anger in the article. Therefore, please do not abuse the information contained therein against anyone.)

Check for the majority of Spanish, Portuguese and North Africans and you will see very dark hair and bushy eye lashes. It is the black genes in those people. How did that happen? Read on!

Duke Alessandro de Medici

Duke Alessandro de Medici

There has been mainstream Eurocentric or Western attempts in describing 'Moors' as people of Caucasian or mixed race; or a claim that it was interchangeable with Arab and Muslim. These are all mainstream Western attempts to minimise the role and place of Blacks in history and influence in European development. 

Duke Alessandro de Medici

(See www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/a/africans-in-medieval-and-renaissance-art-duke-alessandro-de-medici/)
 
In its original form the term "moor" denoted a physical description. It was not used by the Moors themselves. Christians called those lands occupied by black Muslims – Moorish. The Moors called the lands ‘Al-Andalus.’ The only time the term ‘Moor’ came to be used in a non-descriptive manner was during the Islamic epoch of Spain when all Muslims were called Moors, and even then there were modifiers like "Moriscos" to denote non-black converts.  
 
The term maure, mauri or "Moor" was used before the 8th century invasion of Iberia or Iberian Peninsula, which was conquered and ruled by the Moors for nearly 800 years in the period between 711 and 1492. The Iberian Peninsula was referred to by the Moors as ‘Al-Andalus’ and consisted of Asturian, Leonese, Mirandese, Spanish, Portuguese  and Galician: Península Ibérica, Catalan: Península Ibèrica, Aragonese  and Occitan: Peninsula Iberica, French: Péninsule Ibérique, Basque: Iberiar Penintsula. It is located in the extreme southwest of Europe  and includes the modern-day sovereign states  of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar.   
 
Most Muslims of medieval Spain were local “muwalladun.” But the bulk of the Islamic "foreigners" were Berber/Arabic speaking Africans traditionally called Moors. They far outnumbered Arabs, Persians, Syrians and even the Slavs. Al-Mansur, the ruler over all the Muslim dominions following the collapse of the caliphate and preceding the Taifa states, was "stocky and dark-skinned..." (H. Kennedy, Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History", p. 41; p 237).
 
The Spanish account of the Almohad invasion quips that their "faces were like pitch and the most handsome of them was like a cooking pan"; this was of course nine centuries ago.
 
Alfonso X described the invading soldiers of the 13th: Los moros de la hueste todos vestidos del sirgo et de os panos de color que ganaran … las caras dellos negras como la pez el mas fremoso dellos era negro cmo la olla ("All the Moorish soldiers were dressed with silk and black wool that had been forcibly acquired… their black faces were like pitch and the most handsome of them was like a cooking pan.")

All Muslims were called Moors for the simple fact that most of the invaders were notably dark-skinned.  Following the tenth century all local converts were described variously by the Spanish and Portuguese as muladi or mulado after the Spaniards and Portuguese had adopted the Arabic “muwalladin” for half-castes and modified it to mean mixed-race as well as local converts. They tended to call non-black foreigners, including Arabs, saracens. 
 
The dictum holds true that all blacks were Moors but not all Moors were black. Because Moor became synonymous with Islam there came a point in Iberia where the term offered no significant ethnological value, but held its original connotations irrespective of Islam in other parts of Europe (hence the representation of Moors on numerous family crests).
 
The Moors here are perfectly black; the only personal distinction between them and the Negroes being, that the Moors had long black hair, and had no scars on their faces. The Negroes are in general marked in the same manner as those of Tombuctoo." - The narrative of Robert Adams: an American sailor, who was wrecked on the western coast of Africa, in the year 1810, was detained three years in slavery by the Arabs of the Great Desert, and resided several months in the City of Tombuctoo. With a map, notes and an appendix (1817).
 
"Mauri, the inhabitants of Mauritania. This name is derived from their black complexion"  - A classical dictionary: containing a copious account of all proper names mentioned in ancient authors, with the value of coins, weights, and measures used among the Greeks and Romans, and a chronological table (1822) by John Lemprière (www.archive.org/details/classicaldiction00lemp).
 
The Greeks called the Moors, Mauri or mavros which means dark-skinned or black, the word "Moor" is a derivative of this. The Romans called the land Mauritania which means "Land of the blacks". By the time of Shakespeare 'moor' and 'negro' were equivalent. And by the early 17th century the Latin nigri supplanted the Greek mavros.  

In Latin, Mauricius means dark skinned.In Italian, it's Mauro; in French, Maurice; in German, Moritz; English, Morris.
 
Quoting Isidore: "Mauretania vocata a colore populorum; Graeci enim nigrum [uiT'oov vocant" ("Mauretania derives its name from the color of its people, for the Greeks render nigrum as mauron.") This refers not to "sub-Saharan Africa" but northern Africa: "Let's be more precise: we are talking about the inhabitants of Maghreb, particularly Algeria and Morocco (Mauri) in the first millennium AD, not about prehistoric inhabitants of the Sahara. In the context of our discussion, "Sub-Saharan look" might mean the typical appearance of Wolof, Tibbu, Fula, Somalis or San, but not the predominant type found among Kabyles, Chaouia, Riffians or any other Berber group in the Atlas.

I am not sure why are you mentioning the Garamantes here. Isn't this discussion supposed to be about the Mauri? The Romans clearly distinguished these populations, they were two distinct people living in two different regions. You seem to be playing with definitions here."

According to A Book of English Surnames, Blackmore, Blakemore, Blackmoor, Blacomer, Blackomer and Blakomor all derive from the phrase "black as a moor."
 
Charles Dickens said: "Tho convenient term " black-a-moor" — which may be a corruption of " black as a Moor" — comprehended alike the dark- skinned of both Africa and Asia."

In ‘Race, Rhetoric and Composition,’ they argue: "Blackamoor seems understandable, thus, not as a compound of black and moor, but rather as a contraction of the implied argument that this person being referred to was "as black as a Moor."
 
Procopius was clear that the Moors who broke their treaty with Belisarius were distinct from the Vandals, who were "not black-skinned like the Moors, but very white and fair-haired." (History of the Wars, Books III and IV (Vandalic Wars)

In the first or second century Juvenal quipped "a Gaetulian" he encountered was "so black you’d rather not see him at midnight". He said, "tibi pocula cursor Gaetulus dabit aut nigri manus ossea Mauri et cui per mediam nolis occurrere noctem," (satire V. 53). Which translates roughly as, "..handed to you by a Gaetulian messenger, or by the black bony hand of a "Moor" whom you would rather not meet at midnight"

“The Kabyles or Kabaily of Algerian and Tunisian territories besides tillage, work the mines contained in their mountains. They live in huts made of branches of trees and covered with clay which resemble the Magalia of the old Numidians. They are of middle stature, their complexion brown and sometimes nearly black.” from The Encyclopedia Britannica: Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and General Literature Henry G. Allen Company p. 261 Volume I 1890.

The Arthurian text The Romance of Morien, written in 13th century Dutch, one can see that by the name "Morien" the author meant: "He was all black, even as I tell ye: his head, his body, and his hands were all black, saving only his teeth. His shield and his armour were even those of a Moor, and black as a raven."

In the 13th century German tapestry entitled "Wild Men and Moors", you can see quite clearly the dark-skinned "Moors" defending their castle from pale-skinned "Wild men". 

13th century German tapestry entitled "Wild Men and Moors"

 
Moors served under the Romans in Britain, Switzerland, France, Hungary, Poland, Austria, Romania - virtually everywhere Rome held sway. Latin phrases such as "woolly hair like a Moor" leave little doubt as to their racial composition.
 
"A historical rather than an ethnographical term applied to very different peoples of northwestern Africa. In Roman history it is applied to Inhabitants of Mauretania (Morocco and Algeria), who were in part Phoenician colonists. In Spanish history the " Moors " and " Morlscos" were mainly Berbers rather than, as commonly supposed, Arabs.

The Moors, in a stricter ethnological sense, are the mixed Trarza and other tribes on the western coast, from Morocco to the Senegal, mainly of nomadic habits. They are of mixed Berber, Arab, and often Negro blood. Many speak Arabic."  - Dictionary of races or peoples (1911).
 
WHO WERE THE "ANCIENT BRITONS"? "The earliest of these two races would seem to have inhabited our islands from the most ancient times, and may, for our purpose, be described as aboriginal. "

"In physique it was short, swarthy, dark-haired, dark-eyed, and long-skulled; its language belonged to the class called "Hamitic ", the surviving types of which are found among the Gallas, Abyssinians, Berbers, and other North African tribes; and it seems to have come ORIGINALLY FROM some part either of EASTERN, NORTHERN, OR CENTRAL AFRICA."  - The mythology of the British Islands; an introduction to Celtic myth, legend, poetry, and romance (1905) by Charles Squire.

The current pope's coat of arms, which features a bear, a shell, and a "moor's head." Note: the moor is crowned.

Coat of Arms of Pope Benedict XVI

The coat of arms comes from the Bavarian tradition which Joseph Ratzinger introduced into his coat of arms when he became Archbishop of Munich and Freising in 1977. 

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger

(Moor of Freising or Caput Aethiopum, the head of a Crowned Ethiopian, is depicted in natural colour (brown) with red lips, crown and collar. The Moor's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moors) head typically facing to the viewer's left (dexter in heraldic terms) and is associated with the ancient emblem of the Diocese of Freising, founded in the eighth century, which became a Metropolitan Archdiocese with the name of München und Freising in 1818, subsequent to the Concordat between Pius VII and King Maximilian Joseph of Bavaria (5 June 1817). 

This is the ancient emblem of the Diocese of Freising, founded in the 8th century, which became a Metropolitan Archdiocese with the name of München und Freising in 1818, subsequent to the Concordat between Pius VII and King Maximilian Joseph of Bavaria (5 June 1817).

The Moor's head is not rare in European heraldry. It still appears today in the arms of Sardinia (the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily and before Cyprus and Corsica  (located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia), as well as in the blazons of various noble families. 

Flag for Corsica

Coat of Arms for Sardinia

Italian heraldry, however, usually depicts the Moor wearing a white band around his head instead of a crown, indicating a slave who has been freed; whereas in German heraldry the Moor is shown wearing a crown. The Moor's head is common in the Bavarian tradition and is known as the caput Ethiopicum or the Moor of Freising.

The Moor’s head, facing left and typically crowned, appeared on the coat of arms of the old principality of Freising as early as 1316, during the reign of the Bishop of Freising, Prince Konrad III. 

There was widespread the use of the "Black Moor head" in European heraldry the prevalence of blacks on shields, family crests, landmarks etc, throughout the medieval period, is the strongest indication of what "Moor" meant. Were it "medium tan/brown as a moor," we'd be having a very different discussion.

(www.vam.ac.uk/collections/periods_styles/medieval/hidden_histories_africans/heraldry/index.html)
www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/a/africans-in-medieval-and-renaissance-art-moors-head/
 
MOOR'S HEAD, the heraldic term for the head of a NEGRO MAN, in profile, couped at the neck, wreathed about the temples, and having a pearl pendent at the ear.
"MOOR'S HEAD, the heraldic term for the head of a NEGRO MAN, in profile, couped at the neck, wreathed about the temples, and having a pearl pendent at the ear." - Encyclopædia of heraldry: or General armory of England, Scotland, and Ireland, comprising a registry of all armorial bearings from the earliest to the present time (1844) by John Burke, Sir Bernard Burke
In Abd Allah's Roudh el-Kartas, he describes Yusuf ibn Tashfin, the founder of Marrakesh/Morocco, as "Brown color, middle height, thin, little beard, soft voice, black eyes, straight nose, lock of Muhammad falling on the top of his ear, eyebrow joined, wooly hair."

The portrait of Mulay al-Rashid (or "Mulay Arsheid Zeriff" in the US National Portrait Gallery), the founder of the current Alaouite dynasty of Morocco, and conclude he was anything other than black African. As far as Moulay-Ismail, this is how Mulay al-Rashid was described at the time: "He is of middle size; his face is long and thin; his beard, forked and white, his color, almost black with a white mark near the nose" - Abbé Busnot, Histoire de Regne de Mouley Ismael, Roven, 1714

 



Alfonso X was the ruler of Castile, Galacia and Leon for much of the 13th century. How did he describe the invaders?

- Los moros de la hueste todos vestidos del sirgo et de os panos de color que ganaran … las caras dellos negras como la pez el mas fremoso dellos era negro cmo la olla -

"All the Moorish soldiers were dressed with silk and black wool that had been forcibly acquired… their black faces were like pitch and the most handsome of them was like (as black as) a cooking pan."

 Islamic or Moorish Spain was, in fact, mostly black African. Richard Fletcher says: "... "Moorish" Iberia does at least have the merit of reminding us that the bulk of the invaders and settlers were Moors, i.e. Berbers from Algeria and Morocco."
 
Although 'Moor' came to be used in a very general non-descriptive sense to denote Muslim culture in Iberia, some people have taken this as indication that the term never had any specified ethnic/racial connotations. This is indeed a false argument because, as we've seen, the Spanish had modifiers like "Moriscos" to denote mixed heritage.
 
Northern Africa includes the Maghreb, Egypt, Western Sudan, as well as the northern regions of what is today Mauritania, Mali, Chad, Niger and Sudan. The Sahara went from grass to woods to desert by 3,500 BCE. From Morocco to the Red Sea, the once fertile Sahara was pretty much the same climate, where various peoples tended to congregate in the vicinity of Lake Chad.

Today the northern Sahara is a dry sub-tropical climate, while the south is a humid tropical environment.
 
Ibn Khaldun wrote: "The inhabitants of the first and the second zone in the south are called the Abyssinians, the Zanj, the Sudanese. These are synonyms used to designate the particular nation that has turned black. The name Abyssinians however is restricted to those Negroes who live opposite Mecca and the Yemen and the name Zanj is restricted to those who live along the Indian Ocean. These names are not given to them because of an alleged descent from a black human being, be it Ham or anyone else. Negroes from the south who settled in the temperate fourth zone or in the seventh zone that tends towards whiteness, are found to produce descendants whose color gradually turns white in the course of time."

"Our objective is to highlight the age of sub-Saharan gene flows in North Africa and particularly in Tunisia. Therefore we analyzed in a broad phylogeographic context sub-Saharan mtDNA haplogroups of Tunisian Berber populations considered representative of ancient settlement. More than 2,000 sequences were collected from the literature, and networks were constructed. The results show that the most ancient haplogroup is L3*, which would have been introduced to North Africa from eastern sub-Saharan populations around 20,000 years ago. Our results also point to a less ancient western sub-Saharan gene flow to Tunisia, including haplogroups L2a and L3b. This conclusion points to an ancient African gene flow to Tunisia before 20,000 years BP. These findings parallel the more recent findings of both archaeology and linguistics on the prehistory of Africa. The present work suggests that sub-Saharan contributions to North Africa have experienced several complex population processes after the occupation of the region by anatomically modern humans. Our results reveal that Berber speakers have a foundational biogeographic root in Africa and that deep African lineages have continued to evolve in supra-Saharan Africa." - Ancient Local Evolution of African mtDNA Haplogroups in Tunisian Berber Populations, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3659/is_201008/ai_n56443544/

Ibn Butlan, the Iraqi, wrote in the 11th century: "The Berber women ...[t]heir color is mostly black though some pale ones can be found among them. If you can find one whose mother is of Kutama, whose father is of Sanhaja, and whose origin is Masmuda, then you will find her naturally inclined to obedience and loyalty in all matters." Most of the early Arab writers variously described Berbers as so-called sons of Ham.
 
“Ham, having become black because of a curse pronounced against him by his father, fled to the Maghrib to hide in shame.... Berber, son of Kesloudjim [Casluhim], one of his descendants, left numerous posterity in the Maghrib." - Ibn Khaldun, Histoire I, 177–178.

"Now the real fact, the fact which dispenses with all hypothesis, is this: the Berbers are the children of Canaan, the son of Ham, son of Noah." Down this line came Berr who had two sons, Baranis and Madghis al-Abtar. All Berber tribes descended from one or the other of these brothers and were classified as either Baranes or Botr." - Histoire I, 173–185

Adolph Bloch said, in a presentation to the French Anthropology Society in 1896, entitled “Sur des races noires indigènes qui existaient anciennement dans l’afrique septentrionale” (On native black races which existed formerly in northern Africa): "The race which gave birth to the Moroccans can be no other than the African negroes because the same black type [...] is found all the way to Senegal upon the right bank of the river without counting that it has been recognized in various parts of the Sahara [...] and from there comes black Moors who still have thick lips as a result of negro descent and not from intermixture [...] As to the white, bronze, or dark Moors, they are no other than the near relations of black Moors with whom they form the varieties of the same race; and as one can also see among the Europeans, blondes, brunettes, and chestnuts, in the midst of the same population so one may see Moroccans of every color in the same agglomeration without it being a question of their being real mulattos."

In Hispanio-Arabic Poetry and its Relation with Old Provencal Poetry we discover an Arab poet refused to work along side his son because, evidently: "the dark-skinned Berber seemed to him far below his own intellectual standards."
 
Yaqut, the Syrian geographer of the twelfth-thirteenth centuries, that relates a meeting which took place at a transitional period, between the Almoravid and Almohad dynasties:

"The king of Zafun is stronger than the veiled people of the Maghreb and more versed in the art of kingship. The veiled people acknowledge his superiority over them, obey him and resort to him in all important matters of government. One year the king, on his way to the pilgrimage, came to the Maghreb to pay a visit to the commander of the Muslims, the veiled king of the Maghreb, of the tribe of Lamtuna. The Commander of the Muslims met him on foot, whereas the king of Zafun did not dismount for him. He was tall, of deep black complexion and veiled." Zafun was both black and Berber.

On the remains of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians: "The Phoenicians had nothing in common with the official Jewish type: brachycephal, aquiline or Hittite nose, and so on [...] skulls presumably Phoenician, have been found west of Syracuse [...] but these skulls are dolichocephalic and proganthous, with Negroid affinities"

"Other bones discovered in Punic Carthage, and housed in the Lavigerie Museum, come from personages found in special sarcophagi and probably belonging to the Carthaginian elite. Almost all the skulls are dolichocephalic." - Eugene Pittard "Les races et L' histoire."

"The anthropological examination of skeletons found in tombs in Carthage proves that there is no racial unity [...] The so called Semitic type, characterized by the long, perfectly oval face, the thin aquiline nose and the lengthened cranium, enlarged over the nape of the neck has not been found in Carthage. On the other hand, another cranial form, with a fairly short face, prominent parietal bumps, farther forward and lower down than is usual is common [...] most of the Punic population in Carthage had African and even Negro ancestors" - Charles Picard "Daily Life in Carthage at the time of Hannibal"

Appian relates that the figurative Ethiopians "extend from eastern Ethiopia westward to the Mauritanian Mount Atlas."

Cambridge History of Africa: "The Soninke, the people of ancient Ghana, are the northernmost Sudanic people. Before the arrival of the Berbers, their ancestors had occupied the Sahara, as is suggested by the survival of black groups in Walata, Nema, Tichit, and as far Shinqit, who speak Azer, which is a Soninke dialect." 80% of Berber Y-chromosomes originate in east Africa, south of Egypt.

"Snowden (1970) and Desanges (1981) reference various writers’ physical descriptions of the ancient Maghreb’s inhabitants. In various writers’ physical descriptions of the ancient Maghreb’s inhabitants. In addition to the presence of fair-skinned blonds, various “Ethiopian” or “part-Ethiopian” groups are described, near the coast and on the southern slopes of the Atlas mountains. “Ethiopians,” meaning dark-skinned peoples usually having “ulotrichous” (wooly) hair, are noted in various Greek accounts and European coinage (Snowden, 1970). Hiernaux (1975) interprets the finding of “subsaharan” population affinities in living Maghrebans as being solely the result of the medieval transsaharan slave trade; it is clear that this is not the case. Furthermore, the blacks of the ancient Maghreb were apparently not foreign or a caste." (S.O.Y Keita, "Studies of Ancient Crania From Northern Africa," American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 83:35-48 (1990).

 Joseph Vogel stressed: "Populations and cultures now found south of the desert roamed far to the north." (Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa by Joseph O. Vogel, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California, 1997, pp. 465-472).

"Except for the Zandj (black slaves) from lower Iraq, no large body of blacks historically linked to the trans-Saharan slave trade existed anywhere in the Arab world ... The high costs of slaves, because of the risks inherent in the desert crossing, which would have not permitted such a massive exodus ... Until the Crusades the Muslim world drew its slaves from two main sources: Eastern and Central Europe (Slavs) and Turkestan. The Sudan only came third." - Africa from the Seventh to Eleventh Century, UNESCO, 1988.

Source: www.historum.com/members/jehosafats.html

The Biological State and Condition of the African Skin

(Dear Reader - this is not article about the biological black supremacy but simply the details about the biological state and condition of the black skin so that we should not undermine or hate it.)

The African skin is given its dark brown to black pigment by a substance called 'melanin.' Melanin is a dark brown to black pigment occurring in the hair, skin and iris of the eye in people and animals. There are two major forms of melanin -- eumelanin and pheomelanin. Eumelanin is brown to black while pheomelanin is yellow to red.  

The word melanin comes from the Greek term ‘melas,’ 'melasis' or 'melanos,' which means dark or black. It is found in almost every organ of the body and is necessary in order for the brain and nerves to operate, the eyes to see, and the human body to reproduce.

It is produced by cells in the skin called melanocytes. Melanocytes resemble nerve cells and are essential for conveying energy. In the geometric centre of the brain is a part called the "pineal gland" (the Third Eye in Eastern philosophy, the Horus Eye in ancient Egypt or the Inner Vision) and this secretes melatonin which activates the pituitary gland to release the melanocyte stimulating hormone according to light stimulus received through the eyes and from the skin. It is in the melanocytes that melanin is produced. 

The pineal gland is the size of a pea  an eye like structure, is located directly behind the eyes, attached to the third ventricle. This gland is activated by Light, and it controls the various biorhythms of the body. It works in harmony with the hypothalamus gland which directs the body's thirst, hunger, sexual desire and the biological clock that determines our aging process.  

The outer layer of the skin is where melanin is produced and there are 12 black nuclei or melanated centers in the core of the brain. Melanin is present at the inception of life: a melanin sheath covers both the sperm and the egg. In the human embryo, the melanocytes (skin pigment cells), brain and nerve cells all originate from the same place - the neural crest. When Melanin is missing or insufficient in the ectoderm of the early embryo (blastula), this causes the mother to lose her baby; in the case of Caucasians, a defective baby is produced. 

"Individuals whose bodies can produce sufficient quantities of melanin will have dark skin, black hair and brown eyes. Those with bodies that are not able to produce significant amounts of melanin will have pale skin, blonde hair and blue eyes."

Melanin is also found in pigment-bearing neurons within areas of the brain stem, such as the locus ceruleus and the substantia nigra.

At the core of one’s brain is found the locus coeruleus, literally, means ‘dark blue place’ in Latin. It is a nucleus in the brain stem (inferior to the cerebellum in the caudal midbrain/rostral pons) apparently responsible for the physiological reactions involved in stress and panic.

Substantia nigra is the "black substance", a darkly coloured structure buried deep in the brain that makes dopamine, a compound present in the body as a neurotransmitter and a precursor of other substances including epinephrine (a hormone secreted by the adrenal glands, especially in conditions of stress, increasing rates of blood circulation, breathing, and carbohydrate metabolism and preparing muscles for exertion).

Melanin-rich cells in the substantia nigra are the ones most likely to be destroyed in people who have Parkinson's disease, resulting in tremors and rigidity. In fact, all the most crucial brain structures are heavily melanized. Melanin in the brain increases from the lower primates and reaches its peak in the black people.

There are hints that people with lots of skin melanin are less prone to hearing damage than the more lightly pigmented among people because melanin of the skin variety is also found in certain cells of the cochlea of the inner ear.

Melanin is like chlorophyll in plants. Chlorophyll allows photosynthesis to occur and the transference of the sun’s energy for the body. While the growth of plants is directed physical sunlight, the growth of human beings is directed toward spiritual consciousness and inner vision.

Melanin is the super absorber of all forms of energy.  It has "black hole" properties. It can convert light to sound and back again. It stores, transforms and conducts energy.

The colour black is the perfect absorber of light and all energy frequencies, giving melanin these properties. Thus scientists describe melanin as acting like a "black hole." Melanin can rearrange its chemical structure to absorb ALL wavelengths of energy (sunlight, X-rays, music, radar) and can transmute and store this energy for later use.  In The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors (Third World Press, 1991), Dr. Cress Welsing writes that melanin gives us the ability to use our bodies as direct connections with the Godforce, the source of all Energy - like plugging a cord into a wall socket. It also gives our hair antennae-like ability.

Life is built upon carbon or carbon-based compounds. Carbon is a black element that forms the basis of all organic and biochemisrty (Chemistry of Carbon Building Blocks of Life). As an element, it burns hotter, cuts deeper, dies harder, insulates more thoroughly, absorbs more fully than any other material and the key to modern technology. Important biological molecules are arranged around a backbone of carbon. These molecules iclude DNA, RNA, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. Therefore, "blackness" is fundamental in the operation of the universe because it allows the perfect reception of all wavelengths of energy.

It is the body' s natural defense against the ultraviolet rays of the sun and appears as a dark-brownish material inside the cells of the deep layers of the skin. The cells that produce it (melanocytes) are residents in the skin's deepest layers. The more melanin present in the skin, the less risk of damage to the skin.

The amount of melanin one has in the skin will determine the hair and skin colour. Melanin plays an important role in the determination of ultraviolet radiation (UVR) effects, such as wrinkling, premature skin aging and sunburn. Resistance to these effects is determined by the amount of melanin or pigmentation present in the skin. People with albinism are highly sensitive to ultraviolet, which can easily damage skin and eyes and a Caucasian receives protection through temporary pigmentation from tanning by sunbathing or aplication of skin creams. For them, sensitive areas such as lips, nose, ears, palms of the hands and soles of the feet should be protected. In this regard, dark-brown skinned people (Africans, Maories, native Americans, Aborigines and some Indians) have high skin melanin content and are less likely to suffer from skin cancers and other solar-induced diseases than those with lower melanin content

Melanin helps one to survive a variety of environmental conditions. Clearly melanin protects us from the ravages of ultraviolet light. Some of the most darkly pigmented people in the world, natives of the North Solomon Islands, almost never get basal cell carcinoma or melanoma, and if they do have melanomas, these tumors arise on the light-skinned soles of their feet. Caucasians living in Hawaii, on the other hand, have the highest documented skin cancer rate in the United States.

Melanin is the umbrella of the skin and protector of its deeper layers. One of the most important effects of melanin is the absorption of heat, which works most effectively in people who have the most melanin in the skin. Another huge advantage for melanin is that it is an effective neutralizing agent for molecules that are harmful to the human body.

Other amazing facts about melanin:

·     Melanin granules are "central computers" and may analyze and initiate body responses without reporting to the brain;

·     Melanin slows aging and protects you from damning effects of sunlight.  The darker your skin (genetically) is, the less it ages. Thus Whites have wrinkled skin in there 30s while Blacks have smooth, slowly wrinkling skin even in old age;

·     All people of colour have melanin circulating in the blood due to spillage from the melanosomes (melanin packets).

·     The melanin molecule is so stable that it has been found in 150-million-year-old dinosaur fossils. It is highly resistant to chemical and physical analysis; thus its precise structure is unknown;

·     Melanin particles both scatter and absorb ultraviolet and visible light smoothly over a broad spectral range. Every sunburn is an injury, and injuries are cumulative over the years. During the tanning process, the sun stimulates the melanocytes to produce and liberate more melanin for skin protection. This is why Europeans will always come to visit and stay in Africa. Sunbathes especially in Africa and visiting saunas for Europeans is more beneficial because they create a darkish colouring on their skin, thus strengthening it. However, until the melanin reaches the surface of the skin, the skin is left vulnerable and can be heavily damaged and burned.

·     Skin cancer risk rates are inversely proportional to degree of skin pigmentation. Melanin is therefore photo-protective. To look at the undisputed scientific benefits of melanin, we must look at the effects of what naturally occurs on people with or without melanin. Africans do sunburn and seem to be clinically exempt from the well known signs of premature skin aging as seen in Europeans. Africans rarely show deep wrinkles and the other signs of de-pigmentations, leathery-dry skin, etc.

Europeans have produced melanin-based sunscreens lotions, skincare (eye shadow and face powders) and haircare cosmetics to protect their skins. These melanin-based products are meant to provide what they do not have from nature - melanin, the invisible shield of protection. If Caucasians really believe that white skin is "superior," why is "tanning" so important despite its known health risks (thousands die annually from skin cancer)?

In the same vein, they have then produced lotions and creams so that African women can look lighter (like Caucasians) in the name of beauty yet they will be damaging the melanin's capacity to be useful. Africans have then taken up these kind of cosmetics blindly. The electromagnetic spectrum is composed of rays of the sun vary in intensity according to their wavelength, which is measured in nanometers (nm).

The energy emitted by these rays can burn the skin and cause various illnesses. Fortunately, the atmosphere of the earth provides a natural barrier against ultraviolet radiation and the ozone layer filters out many of them. Because they penetrate deep into the skin, the rays of the sun have far-reaching effects. The main consequence is that the body tissues slacken, the skin loses its firmness and fine lines and wrinkles are formed.

Sun protection is mainly a matter of putting a barrier between sunlight and the skin, as well as respecting some simple rules (gradual exposure to the sun, using clothes as protection, not going in the sun at the hottest time of day and using melanin-based sunscreen). Skins of Caucasians are obviously the most at risk.

The African skin is dark and therefore rich in MELANIN and therefore: 

1. Never let anyone make you feel ugly, bad or inferior for having a dark skin. 

2. Never let anyone try to change your dark pigmentation by using skin bleaching cremes and skin lighteners.